Sam Allardyce has expressed frustration that Crystal Palace’s players have yet fully to embrace his methods and has reminded them that, if they take his advice on board, the club can still clamber free of the bottom three.
Palace have secured only four points from eight games since Allardyce replaced Alan Pardew just before Christmas and go into Saturday’s Premier League home game against Middlesbrough 19th in the table. The squad have had a fortnight to prepare and will seek to erase the memories of the 4-0 thrashing endured against Sunderland in their last home fixture, with Allardyce having outlined what is required if he is to preserve his record of never having been relegated from the top flight.
“The advice I’ve given players over the years must have been pretty good because I’ve been managing at this level for such a long time,”Allardyce said. “So my experience comes from talking to the players at this top level for many years, and being able to produce a team that wins matches and finishes where they should, or better than where they should in terms of what we spend and the players we have … I’m trying to pass that experience on to the players. I’m a little frustrated they haven’t quite grasped that yet.
“My experience and my qualifications are far greater than theirs. They can talk about tactics and systems, that’s fine, but they’re players, they’re paid to play. I’m the manager, and the system and tactics are my expertise, not theirs. When I set those out, they have to put them into practice. Stay focused, stay within the game-plan.
“I keep asking the players to listen, to learn, and go out and practise in training and take that practice on to the pitch on the Saturday. Where I am struggling is the players keeping the message and staying with the game plan. If they do that, they’ll have a better chance of a result. But the loss of focus has been a problem because we’ve gone chasing games when we’ve gone a goal down. Instead of playing our way back into the match, we’ve opened ourselves up more. They’ve chosen the wrong tactic and made it easier to score against them than before. We have to cut that out.”
Palace’s dismal form goes back to the beginning of 2016 when, under Pardew, they had been flirting with European qualification at the other end of the table. Allardyce inherited a side whose confidence was brittle, and suggested he had experienced some resistance from within the squad to his methods.
“Maybe it’s because it’s been going on for so long now,” he said. “Or they’ve just found it difficult to change. But we all have to change, pull in the right direction, and do what the coaches are saying.”
“The players have to accept that a lot of them haven’t played at their best, consistently, for a long time. They need to go back to where they used to be, remembering their best games, going back to what they did best, and stop being negative about themselves. So go and remember the great times, when they played really well. Go and watch those games. Being fifth in the league in December 2015 is not that long ago.
“But a player has a responsibility to himself to go and revisit that again. We can’t sit down with them all day and every day... With the technology we have, we can push it online to them, on their iPads, iPhones, we can add music to it if they want. We can juggle up anything up they fancy. If that makes them feeling that little bit more positive, that little bit better, that’s what we’ll have to do. If a player’s will and determination is big enough, they come through it. They need a bit more grit and desire because we’re in a fight now. A scrap. Sometimes we’re going to have to be a bit uglier than we have been to get a result.”
Allardyce’s Sunderland had also languished 19th after 25 games last season, albeit with one point more than Palace have this time round, and still survived. Now his priority is to ensure they do not equal a club record six successive home league defeats against Boro and start their own revival.
“I was in exactly the same position, about not being able to win at home, with Sunderland last year,” said the manager. “We had to change things to get out of trouble and we ended up beating United, Chelsea and Everton at home. So we did turn it around up there. We have to do it down here the same way. If we could achieve it at Sunderland, we can certainly achieve it here.”
